Part 1 of this
article was printed in American
Almanac, Vol. 8, No. 23, of June
27, 1994. Part 2 was printed in Vol. 8,
No. 24, of July 4, 1994.

Despite the presence of Morgan agents
in his cabinet and among his advisers,
Roosevelt remained in control
of policy and, from the standpoint
of Wall Street, highly unpredictable.

On Nov. 16, 1933, Roosevelt
recognized the Soviet Union,
the first Western leader to do so. The
bankers' press screamed of a
potentially dangerous ``new Rapallo''
agreement with the Soviets. The fear
was that if America broke Russia's
isolation, British geopolitical
aims, which included the unleashing
of a war between Nazi Germany
and the Soviet Union, might be subverted.

Six weeks later, Roosevelt
announced that he would never again
send American troops to Ibero-America
to violate the sovereignty of nations
to protect the bankers' investments.

The bankers' cabal began now
to consider more drastic action
to deal with their Roosevelt problem.

The keynote for what was
intended was struck by none other than
Morgan partner Thomas Lamont, who chose
an address before the Foreign Policy
Association, to heap praise on
Mussolini and his methods, stating that
fascism, as economic and political
policy, works.

``We count ourselves liberal, I
suppose,'' he told the FPA. ``Are we
liberal enough to be willing for the
Italian people to have the sort of
government they apparently want?''
asked Lamont.

Fascism or some variant of it,
he said, was not to be ruled
out as policy for the United States.

On Dec. 1, 1933, MacGuire left
with his family for an extended trip to
Europe. He stayed more than seven
months, spending time in France,
Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, London and
Scotland, Holland, and, according to one
report, Russia. He was later to report
to Butler that he was on a
``fact-finding'' mission to study the
relationship of soldiers to fascist
mass movements. He was looking for
something that would work in the United
States.

MacGuire, in order to impress
Butler with the powers that were
backing his efforts to establish a
fascist superorganization, stated that
while in Paris, he worked directly from
the offices of Morgan and Hodges.
MacGuire may have indeed
established contacts with various
fascist organizations, and found the
structure of the Masonic-led ``secret
conspiracy'' of the French Croix du Feu
(Fiery Cross) as a useful metaphor for
the type of organization to be created
in the United States. But those behind the
bond salesman and manipulator MacGuire
certainly did not need to learn how to
create fascist ``mass'' movements, of
either the left or right. They had been
doing so for years.

MacGuire had gone to Europe, under
Morgan instructions, and with the
blessings of the cabal of
U.S. British assets that included:

J.P. Morgan, Jr., the key banker
for the House of Windsor, the personal
friend and confidant of King George V
and King George VI. He was
in Britain from July-early September
1934, at the point at which the
decision was made to go forward with
the coup plans, where he met several
times with members of the House of
Windsor.

Thomas Lamont, who actually ran
the House of Morgan, also spent a great
deal of time in Great Britain, with
access to high levels of the British
oligarchy, if not quite as high as
Morgan himself. Lamont in particular
coordinated policy with British
intelligence and the foreign office on
Asia, working with the networks of the
former British East India Company.
Lamont also took a direct role
in coordinating with Bank
of England head Montagu Norman
financing of both the Hitler and
Mussolini operations, as well as
London-directed financial warfare
against the United States. He, too, was
in Europe at this time.

John W. Davis, the former U.S. ambassador
to the Court of St. James and accepted
into the top circles of the British elite. A
high-ranking Scottish Rite Freemason,
Davis came from a line of
British-linked traitors from Virginia,
and was seconded into the Morgan firm
as its counsel through these
connections. Later, he was to defend
segregation as necessary for the
preservation of the race in the
landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of
Education Supreme Court case. Davis
was with Morgan on his prviate yacht during the
late spring of 1934.

Grayson Mallet-Prevost Murphy's
British pedigree has already been
estblished, to which we must add his
membership in the Freemasons. Robert
Clark's British connections come
through the Morgan channels in Paris
and through his Asian contacts,
including to the British Royal Society,
for which he did work on China. Hanford
MacNider, a member of the Legion's
Royal Family, was later made ambassador
to Canada, where he became ensconsed in
the networks of MacKenzie King,
London's top Canadian operative.

It is total misdirection to
identify the plot as being directed by
``Wall Street.'' It was British,
through and through, so much so that
its banner might as well have been the
Union Jack.

A Fascist Base

MacGuire sent Butler a card from
the French Riviera in February. He sent
another in June 1934 from Berlin.

Meanwhile, aspects of the plot that had
little directly to do with MacGuire,
were already in motion.

During the spring of 1934, money
was being pumped into the creation of various
fascist paramilitary organizations,
each of which claimed to be
the protection of America from the
``red menace'' and from the influences
of the ``New Deal.'' Some were openly
fascist, such as the Silver Shirts, the
stormtroopers led by the Rev. Gerald L.
K. Smith. Others, such as the Crusaders,
spurned the fascist epithet, but
nonetheless avowed fascist policy goals
to crush organized labor and the
``Reds.'' Still others were directly funded
by bankers and financiers, such as the
Sentinels of the Republic, funded by
the Morgan-allied Pew and Pitcarin
families.

The Scottish Rite Freemasons, in
the tradition of the treasonous Albert
Pike, helped John H. Kirby establish
the Southern Committee to Uphold the
Consitution, which, like the Klan
itself, was financed with ``northern
money.''

In Hollywood, the actor Victor
McLaglen, who was reputed to be an
operative of the British Foreign
Office, established the
California Light Brigade, which was
ready to march at a moment's notice
against any threat to ``Americanism.''
He was rewarded for his efforts with an
Academy Award for best actor by
pro-fascist Louis Mayer's Academy of
Motion Picture Arts in 1935.

All these organizations spawned
cells throughout the country. They
were in no way impeded in their
operations by the FBI, under the
direction of Masonic operative ``Gay''
Edgar Hoover.

This organizing, in the spring and
early summer of 1934, took place under
an intensifying media brainwashing
barrage about the danger of the ``New
Deal socialism'' and the threat of a
``Red'' takeover in the United States.
Morgan mouthpiece Herbert Hoover called
the New Deal ``class hatred ...
preached by the White House.'' Hoover
called New Deal policies ``universal
bankruptcy.'' He urged the American
people to ``rise up'' against the
political menace represented by
Roosevelt.

While this propaganda was directed
at the Babbits of the American middle
class, there was an outright organizing
campaign for fascism directed at the
leaders of American industry and
finance and management level personnel
in the private sector and the
government. The content of this, taken from
the media of the day, is all basically
the same: glorification of the economic
``miracle'' of Mussolini's Italy with
pointed inference that this form of
fascism was just what the doctor
ordered to restore order in the United
States.

For example, the July
1934 issue of Henry Luce's Fortune
magazine devoted its entire
issue to praise of Mussolini! In an
editorial by Laird Goldsborough, the
British-linked foreign editor of the
magazine, readers were told that
``Fascism is achieving in a few years
or decades such a conquest of the
spirit of man as Christianity achieved
only in ten centuries.... The good
journalist must recognize in Fascism
certain ancient virtues of the race,
whether or not they happen to be
momentarily fashionable in his own
country. Among these are Discipline,
Duty, Courage, Glory, and Sacrifice.''

Roosevelt's Program

In June 1934, Roosevelt, for the
first time in U.S. history, ordered a halt
to all farm foreclosures, while using
existing legislation, supplemented by
other acts, to establish a system of
crop parity payments. He established
the Securities and Exchange Commission
to end unregulated stock speculation,
while establishing regulatory agencies
to oversee the communications and radio
industries.

But the most politically
significant steps he took were to
guarantee the rights of trade unions to
organize, to prevent actions by
employers to block unionization, and to
force employers to accept collective
bargaining agreements. These moves,
which were to culminate in the 1935
Wagner Act, the so-called ``Bill of
Rights'' for labor, strengthened and
expanded, especially among industrial
workers, political institutions--trade
unions--which could be used by
Roosevelt as a direct counter to the
fascist mobilization being organized by
the Morgan-allied clique.

Roosevelt, by personally taking
the lead in fighting for the right to
organize and for protection of workers
against employers' excesses, won the
political loyalty of the rank-and-file
unionist. Should a fascist movement
have been activated in the manner
described in Butler's testimony and
being planned by those behind MacGuire,
Roosevelt could have and probably would
have called on these layers to defend
the Constitution and his presidency.

And when MacGuire returned from
Europe in late July, a fascist coup was
very much on the agenda.

The Plan for the Coup

On Aug. 22, Butler received a
phone call from MacGuire. It was urgent
that he talk to the general
immediately, MacGuire said. There was
something ``of the utmost importance''
that he must tell him that day.
Butler, exhausted from an extended
nationwide tour for the Veterans
of Foreign Wars (VFW), nonetheless
agreed to meet at the Bellevue
Hotel in downtown Philadelphia. In a
corner of the hotel's deserted
restaurant, MacGuire laid out the plans
that been hatched in Europe, and now
apparently agreed upon by the coup
plotters.

Now, MacGuire said that the time
had come to ``get the soldiers
together.'' He explained that the
purpose of his seven-month European
trip was to study ``organizations''
whose methods and structure could be
adapted to American needs. He had found
that veterans' organizations were the
``backbone'' of the fascist movements in
Italy and Germany; however, American
soliders would not go along with such a
paramilitary movement, organized for an
overtly political purpose.

However, in France, he said, he
had found the perfect organization: The
``Croix du Feu'' of de la Rocque. This
organization had functioned
politically, but was organized for an
economic purpose. He explained that the
``Fiery Cross'' had a core membership
of about 500,000 officers and
non-commissioned officers, but that
each member was responsible for
organizing at least 10 others,
covertly, giving the organization a
``fighting strength'' of more than 5
million.

Butler asked what this new
``superorganization'' of soldiers would
do. MacGuire hesitated, then answered that
it would ``support'' the President; the
general replied that Roosevelt didn't
need such support and wondered when
MacGuire and his clique had become
``supporters'' of Roosevelt.

MacGuire responded by pointing
out that Roosevelt needed money
to finance the New Deal programs and
that money came from the sale of
government bonds through the banking
interests that were controlled by
Morgan and his allies. ``There is not
any more money to give him,'' MacGuire
now claimed.

``Eighty percent of the
money is now in government bonds, and
he can't keep this racket up much
longer.... He has either got to get more
money out of us or he has got to
change the method of financing the
government, and we are going to see
that he does not change that method. He
will not change it.''

MacGuire tried to explain that his
backers were confident that they would
force Roosevelt to change his policy,
and the 500,000 soldiers and the millions
behind them in secret organizations
``would sustain him when others assault
him.''

Butler questioned how Roosevelt,
who had staked his personal reputation
on the New Deal, would explain such an
abrupt about-face.

MacGuire explained that Roosevelt
did not have to ``explain'' it.

``Did it ever occur to you that
the President is overworked?'' MacGuire
asked. He said that the ``overworked
President'' needed help and that an
``Assistant President'' was needed.
This ``assistant President'' would
take over
much of Roosevelt's job and could take
the blame for the change of policy.

MacGuire said that it ``wouldn't
take any constitutional change to
authorize another cabinet official,
somebody to take over the details of
the office--to take them off the
President's shoulders.'' He mentioned
that the position would be sort of a
``super secretary'' or what he referred
to as a ``secretary of general
affairs.'' MacGuire claimed that the
American people would be more than
willing to swallow this: ``We have got
all the newspapers. We will start a
campaign that the President's health is
failing. Everybody can tell by looking
at him and the dumb American people
will fall for it in a second.''

MacGuire then indicated that
Roosevelt was already surrounded by
allies of the Morgan coup plotters. He
said that the pro-fascist Gen. Hugh
Johnson, whom Roosevelt had put in
charge of the National Recovery
Administration and who had expressed
admiration for Mussolini, was the man
the Morgan group would have preferred
as this general secretary. But,
according to MacGuire, Roosevelt was
going to fire him because he ``talked
too damn much.'' (Roosevelt did
``fire'' Johnson, just as MacGuire said
he would, the next month. After his
forced resignation, Johnson was given a
regular column by the Scripps-Howard
newspapers, for the express purpose of
attacking the President, which he did,
in the most vitriolic manner possible.)

Butler asked MacGuire how he knew so much
about what was going on inside the
White House and the administration.
``Oh, we are in with him all the
time,'' came the reply. ``We know what
is going to happen.''

MacGuire told Butler that, within
a year from this discussion, the coup
plotters wanted him to march his army
of 500,000 people into Washington. He
stressed that there would be no
revolution, that everything would be
constitutional: It had all been worked
out, in advance. The Secretary of
State, Cordell Hull, would resign, as
would Vice President John Nance Garner;
the sense given was that both these
figures were ``in'' on the plot, or
minimally, that Morgan and their allies
had enough ``chits'' to call in that
they could be counted on to do what
they were instructed, under the
circumstances. According to MacGuire,
Roosevelt would allow the plotters
to appoint a new secretary of state. If
Roosevelt, with 500,000 men occupying
Washington, was willing to ``return to
his class,'' he would be allowed to
remain on as President.

``We'd do with him what Mussolini did
to the King of Italy,'' MacGuire told
Butler, saying that the President's
function would become ceremonial much
like the President of France.

But, if Roosevelt refused to go
along, MacGuire insisted, he ``would be
forced to resign, whereupon under the
Constitution, the presidential
succession would place the secretary of
state in the White House.'' Butler was
to tell a congressional committee that
MacGuire thought that all this could
take place bloodlessly--a ``cold
coup.'' All that was needed was a
``show of force in Washington'' and then
he, Butler, would be ``the man on the
white horse'' who would ``ride to the
rescue of capitalism.'' An armed show
of force was the ``only way to save the
capitalist system,'' MacGuire asserted.

Butler, trying to play along with
MacGuire to discover who was behind
this plot, said that what was being
proposed would cost a great deal of
money. He was told not to worry.
MacGuire already had ``$3 million
to start with, on the line, and we can get
$300 million if we need it.'' He
reminded Butler that the banker Clark
had told the general that he was
personally willing to commit as much as
$15 million.

He then told Butler that even more
powerful people than Clark stood
directly behind the plan. When he was
in Europe, he reported, he had held
meetings at the Paris office of Morgan
& Hodges, Morgan's Paris operation. He
claimed that the Morgan group had
strong reservations about Butler,
fearing that he might try to double
cross them. He stressed that the others
involved, however, had gotten the
Morgan interests to agree that Butler
was the best man to ``get the soldiers
together,'' implying that Grayson
Murphy, Clark, and himself had backed
the general. MacGuire claimed that the
Morgan interests would have preferred
Gen. Douglas MacArthur, whose wife was
the daughter of Morgan's partner at
Drexel in Philadelphia; if not
MacArthur, they preferred the former
Legion national commander and former
ambassador to Canada and confidant of
MacKenzie King, Hanford MacNider. Both
later denied having been approached by
the plotters, although it is likely
that Butler was not the only choice to
head the ``superarmy.''

Butler tried to probe further,
asking when there would be signs of the
coming together of a larger and
powerful organization which would
provide public backing for this plot.
He was astonished when he was told that
``within a few weeks'' there would be
an organization of some of the most
powerful people in the land who would
come together to ``defend the
Constitution.'' MacGuire explained the
manner in which this organization,
which he would not name, would function
using a musical analogy: It was to
serve the purpose of ``the villagers or
chorus in an opera,'' establishing the
setting and the scene, for the great
action to take place.

Asked for more information,
MacGuire would only reveal that one of
the new group's spokesmen would be the 1928
Democratic presidential candidate Al
Smith, who until that time had backed
Roosevelt and the New Deal. It was
explained that Smith, who edited New
Outlook magazine, would within weeks,
break with Roosevelt and launch attacks
on the New Deal and administration. It
had all been arranged, he told Butler,
who still refused to make a commitment
to the plot.

MacGuire got up to leave, telling
Butler that he was headed for Miami and
the American Legion convention to
agitate for the gold standard and to
organize the soldiers into the
``superarmy.''

The League of Treason

As MacGuire and Butler met in
Philadelphia, Jouett Shouse, a
protégé of du Pont lawyer and
Morgan operative John J. Raskob, had
assembled the press to his office in
Washington, D.C.'s National Press
Building to announce the formation of a
new policy advocacy group, the American
Liberty League.

A former congressman from Kansas
and assistant secretary of treasury
during the Wilson administration,
Shouse had gained the reputation of a
political ``fixer,'' much like the
present-day Robert Strauss. In 1928,
the bankers' operative Raskob, a former
director of General Motors, was moved
into the chairmanship of the Democratic
National Committee, running the
disastrous election campaign of Al
Smith, ensuring a Hoover victory.
Not wishing to give up control of the
party to the political machines, Raskob
brought in Shouse as the executive
director of the national committee.

As soon as Roosevelt was in a position
to do it, he moved to get rid of both
of these ``inside'' men.

Now, in the heat of the summer of
1934, Shouse announced that the Liberty
League would be a mass-based movement,
whose intention it was, as the next
day's headline on the front page of
The New York Times declared, ``To Scan
New Deal, `Protect Rights.'|'' The
Morgan rag, The Times printed the
entirety of Shouse's statement, that
had been prepared in conjunction with
Raskob. This new organization would,
according to Shouse, ``unite
several millions of people from all
walks of life who are now without
organized influence in legislative
matters.''

There were, said Shouse, ``no
covert purposes. There is no object
sought beyond the simple statement in
our charter.'' He stressed that there
was no partisan purpose, that the group
was not ``anti-Roosevelt.''

``The League aims to do just what
is outlined in its charter, to organize
those who believe in upholding property
and constitutional rights into a vocal
group,'' Shouse told the press. ``It
is not intended to be antagonistic to
the administration. We intend to try to
help the President.'' Asked how such a
group could ``help'' the President,
Shouse replied: ``If a tendency towards
extreme radicalism developed which the
President wished to check we might be
most helpful with our organization in
which we expect to enlist 2,000,000 to
3,000,000.''

Shouse announced that a group had
been self-selected to serve as the
League's initiating executive
committee. All of them were
Morgan-allied stooges: Morgan's lawyer,
John W. Davis, the former Democratic
presidential candidate; Irenee du Pont,
who ran the du Pont fortune now
controlled by the Morgan interests;
Nathan Miller, the former GOP governor
of New York and a Morgan
preferred-client list member; Rep.
James Wadsworth of New York, a
Republican and supporter of the gold
standard; and Al Smith, the ``happy
warrior'' who had been totally
corrupted by Morgan money and who had
headed the corporation that built and
ran the Empire State Building.

Shouse showed the press letters
from financiers, business leaders, and
politicians from all over the country
applauding the League's formation.

A few weeks later, the chorus of
``villagers,'' as MacGuire had
described them, was expanded to include
additional prominent leaders of finance
and business, with a heavy emphasis on
Morgan allies. On its advisory council
were, among 200 others: Dr. Samuel
Hardin Church, who ran the Carnegie
Institute in Pittsburgh, and who was a
mouthpiece for the Mellons; W.R.
Perkins of National City Bank; Alfred
Sloan, the man the Morgans selected to
run General Motors; David Reed, a
U.S. senator from Pennsylvania,
who in May 1932, said on the floor of
the Senate, ``I do not often envy other
countries and their governments, but I
say that if this country ever needed a
Mussolini, it needs one now'';
E.T. Weir of Weirton Steel, who was
also known as a supporter of fascism.
On its executive committee was Morgan
stooge and former New York Supreme
Court Justice Joseph M. Proskauer, the
general counsel to the Consolidated Gas
Company; J. Howard Pew of Sun Oil and
the funder of the openly fascist
Sentinels of the Republic; and Hal
Roach, the Hollywood producer, who, like
many of his peers, was an open
admirer of Mussolini, and who was later
to become a partner with Mussolini's
son in a Hollywood production company,
RAM (``Roach and Mussolini'') Films,
Inc.

The league's treasurer was none
other than Grayson Mallet-Prevost
Murphy!

Despite all the publicity and
statements from Shouse, the league
never recruited large numbers of
people, nor was it really intended to.
It was a sham, intended to
give the appearance of mass resistence
to Roosevelt, and to offer a constant
attack on his policies.

Those involved in its creation
knew the league's role as a ``villagers
chorus,'' working to establish the
climate for the larger fascist plot.
That was made clear in a series of
pre-meetings in July that created
the league from the shards
of another Morgan-linked operation, the
Association Against the Prohibition
Amendment, which had been directed by
Raskob and Shouse. Attending the
planning sessions in the offices
of Al Smith in New York were Raskob,
Shouse, Morgan partner
Lamont, members of the du Pont family,
including Irenee du Pont, and Morgan
lawyer John W. Davis.

One week earlier, Shouse had gone
to the White House to brief the
President on the new organization,
and determine the President's advance knowledge.
Roosevelt played things very
close to the chest, telling Shouse that
he welcomed open debate and that he
would not come out and denounce the
formation of the league. In fact, he
told Shouse, he would be willing to
give it a short statement expressing
his approval. Roosevelt said he would
be on vacation on the day that the
league was to be formed, so he told his
secretary to prepare such a statement.

On Aug. 22, Shouse called the
White House, hoping for the promised
statement. He was told that no one knew
about it, since the President's
secretary had gone with him. Neither
the secretary nor Roosevelt could be
reached and the White House would make
no supportive comment, he was told.

Roosevelt returned to Washington
on Aug. 24 and held his weekly press
conference. He had avoided all comment
on the League until them, but when
asked he had a ready reply. The Liberty
League, he told the press, was founded
``to uphold two of the Ten
Commandments,'' the ones nominally
dealing with protecting property. It
said nothing about protecting the
average citizen, or of helping the
unemployed and others in need. In
short, said the President, it didn't
deal with anything that was covered by
that most important Commandment, ``Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.''
The league was fine as far as it went,
he said, but it was stopping short of
doing what was Christian and necessary.
He couldn't support it because of that
problem, but whether other people want
to or not, is ``none of my business,''
he said laughing.

The league's attack on Roosevelt
started in late November, after the
fall congressional elections. In the
last four months of 1934, it spent about
$94,000; the next year it was to spend
just under $390,000, mostly on the
publication and circulation of
pamphlets, leaflets, and bulletins
attacking Roosevelt's policies. The
league also received millions of
dollars in free publicity for its
``authoritative'' views from a very
friendly press and radio networks. This
operation, in all its forms, was the
most sophisticated multi-media smear
campaign in history up to that point.

Exposing the Plot

Butler had once thought that
perhaps MacGuire was a ``loose
cannon,'' operating without the
sanction of those whom he professed
were in on the plot.

However, after the Aug. 22
meeting, and the quick succession of
events that MacGuire had matter of
factly ``forecast,'' including the
appearance of the Liberty League,
Butler became convinced that a
network, centered around the powerful
Morgan interests, had indeed
launched a ``live'' coup operation
against the government in Washington.

General Butler decided
that it was his duty, regardless of the
consequences that might befall him and
his family, to expose the plotters, to
the extent of his knowledge of that
plot. Butler had been both
controversial and in the public eye for
some time; he realized that all those
involved in the plot would simply deny
it, using their influence over the
press to ridicule him for publicity
seeking. He therefore decided to take a
risk, and seek help in at least
corroborating some of the key
information, before he went public.

Butler turned to Tom O'Neill, the
city editor of the Philadelphia
Record with whom he had become friends
during his stint fighting the
underworld as the city's appointed
anticrime czar in the 1920s. O'Neill
was flabbergasted by the report of the
coup plot, but knowing how the Morgan
interests operated in his own city, he
didn't doubt that they were capable of
treason. He assigned his star reporter,
Paul Comley French, to investigate the
story. French, who also wrote for
The New York Evening Post and who was
later to become the director of the
Committee for American Relief in Europe
(CARE), was set up by Butler to talk to
MacGuire, posing as an intermediary to
discuss the general's further
participation in MacGuire's plans.

In early September, French went to
see MacGuire at his offices on the
premises of Grayson M.P. Murphy and
Company in New York. In the meeting,
French was able to substantiate every
allegation about the plot that Butler
had attributed to MacGuire. But the
bond salesman chose to be even more
frank with French than he had dared to
be with the general. He made it clear
that those backing the coup were
interested in destroying the presidency
and in creating an American form of
fascist government.

``We need a fascist government,''
French was to quote MacGuire as saying
in his testimony before a congressional
committee, ``to save the nation from
the Communists.'' MacGuire repeated
this theme several times during his
conversation with French. Taking the
bait that French was operating as
Butler's ``agent'' in negotiations,
MacGuire told him that his backers
would have no problems coming up
with $1 million immediately to organize
Butler's ``army.'' MacGuire said that
all he needed to do to get the money
was place phone calls to Morgan
attorney John W. Davis and W.R. Perkins
of National City Bank, and to some
other people of similar status.
MacGuire also revealed that several national
commanders of the American Legion,
including Louis Johnson, Henry Stevens,
and the present commander, the banker
Belgrano, were all in favor of the plot
and would back it.

MacGuire, seeing that French was
more interested in questions of policy
than the crusty General, informed
French that his backers had already
devised a plan to end unemployment:
``It was the plan that Hitler had used
in putting all of the unemployed in
labor camps or barracks--enforced
labor. That would solve it [the
unemployment problem] overnight.'' He
also claimed that they would force all
people in the nation to ``register''
and carry identification papers. ``He
said that would stop a lot of these
communist agitators who were running
around the country,'' French later
told the congressional committee.

MacGuire reported that those
behind him were going to create a
deliberate financial crisis for the
administration. They were prepared to
choke off credit to the New Deal
programs, force interest rates higher,
and force the rates that the government
would have to pay to borrow up toward
then-astronomical level of 5 percent or
more. This, MacGuire said, would produce
a ``new crash.'' He then described how
the crash would unleash the ``left,''
creating new agitation and disruptions,
especially among the growing numbers of
new unemployed. With the nation
consumed in chaos, the time would be
right for the ``man on the white
horse'' to ride into Washington, force
the overturning of the elected
government, the end of ``presidential
rule'' and the start of a new, fascist
era for the nation.

MacGuire told French
that it would be no problem getting the
soldiers army weapons from the du
Pont-controlled Remington Arms
Company; the du Pont interests were
fully in support of the plans, MacGuire
stated.

French went to see MacGuire once
more, on Sept. 27, again at the
offices of Grayson M.P. Murphy and Co.
in New York. In a brief meeting,
MacGuire said that things were moving
along nicely. ``|`Everything is coming
our way' is the way he expressed it,''
French told the committee.

With corroboration in hand, Butler
felt it now was necessary to go public.
Before he could make his decision on
how to proceed, he was approached by
investigators for the Special House
Committee to Investigate Nazi
Activities in the United States.

That committee was quickly to have
its Congressional mandate changed to
focus primarily on ``Reds,'' evolving
still later into the House Un-American
Activities Committee, which became even
more noxious under the leadership of
Rep. Martin Dies. But at this moment,
its leadership was controlled by allies
of Roosevelt. The committee had,
through its own sources, heard of a
plot to overthrow the government that
had involved General Butler. It was
arranged for General Butler to testify
in executive session on Nov. 20,
when the committee was in New York.

Butler welcomed the chance to
testify, but was concerned that it was
going to be behind closed doors. This
would allow for managed news coverage,
that would be leaked to the media from
the committee staff. It would also mean
that, with the plotters controlling the
press, there could be no assurance that
his story would ever be made known to
the American people. Butler and French
decided on an insurance policy: Three
days before he was to testify, French
broke the coup story simultaneously in
The Record and The
Post, under the banner headline
``$3,000,000 Bid for Fascist Army
Bared;'' the story featured direct
statements from Butler, naming most of
the names he was later to reveal in his
testimony.

Butler Names the Names

Butler traveled from Paoli to New
York to testify on Nov. 19. By the time
the hearing started at the offices of
the Bar Association the next day, the
temperature was already well on the way
to a record 74 degrees F, the hottest
day for any November in history. Butler
was prepared to add to that ``heat.''

As the hearing opened, Butler
thought it necessary to make a brief
statement concerning his involvement in
the plot: ``May I preface my remarks,
by saying sir, that I have one interest
in all of this and that is to to try to
do my best to see that democracy is
maintained in this country?''

Cutting him short, committee
co-chair Rep. John McCormack, Democrat
of Massachussets, who was later to
become Speaker of the House, stated,
``Nobody who has either read or known
about General Butler would have
anything but that understanding.''

Butler then proceeded to tell the
story, in the great detail, that we have
described above. As he proceeded, he
was asked for clarification on several
points. The general provided what
additional details he could, but never
ventured into speculation, sticking to
the statements made directly to him by
those involved in the conspiracy.

He was followed as a witness by
Paul Comley French, who, from his own
direct contact with MacGuire, was able
to corroborate all the pertinent
details of the fascist plot, and added
additional details revealed by
MacGuire, including the fascist
policies preferred by the coup's
backers. In all, their testimony lasted
approximately two hours.

Butler and French were followed in
the afternoon by Gerald MacGuire, the
employee of Grayson M.P. Murphy who had
served as the intermediary for ``the
higher ups'' to General Butler.
MacGuire meekly claimed that he was
merely a $150-a-week bond salesman, and
denied that there was any plot. He told
the committee that he had merely gone
to talk to the general about buying
some bonds. He denied ever showing
Butler 18 $1,000 bills in
Newark, and spending the amounts
Butler claimed he had spent to get a
gold standard resolution passed at the 1933
American Legion convention. MacGuire
claimed that his seven-month sojourn
to Europe was merely ``a family
vacation.'' When questioned
about where he got the money for it on
his supposedly meager salary, he
changed his story to say that it was
also a ``business trip'' to sell bonds,
although he couldn't remember the
name of a single contact
he had made in Europe!

Committee investigators produced
evidence that the bond salesman
MacGuire handled funding for various
operations outside ``normal business''
for the banker Robert S. Clark, for whom he did
not work. It was revealed that he was
the treasurer for the Committee for a
Sound Dollar, Inc., which was widely
known to be a front for Morgan and
other large financial interests. Caught
in his own lies, MacGuire offered no
explanation of how he became involved in
this activity, but claimed that it had
nothing to do with any conversations
with General Butler, whom he described
as a ``personal friend.''

Several times, under direct
examination, MacGuire denied asking
Butler to lead any organization of
soldiers or of discussing any plans to
march ``troops'' on Washington.

Members of the committee found
MacGuire's denials unconvincing; they
ordered him to return the next day for
further questioning.

Reporters crowded the steamy
corridors outside the hearing room,
looking for a story. When the
witnesses, including the committee
co-chairs, emerged, they provided the
press with bare outline of Butler and
French's testimony. Within hours, the
story, which had been broken by French
three days earlier, was out all over
the country. Knowing what was in store,
the plotters now tried damage control,
using, as Butler had expected, ridicule
as their main weapon against the truth.

On Nov. 21, The New York
Times, a paper that Heywood Broun
once described as ``black with the
shoepolish of Morgan,'' took the lead
in this campaign, with a front-page
two-column article under the headline:
``General Butler Bares `Fascist Plot'
to Seize Government by Force.'' Having
already put the words `fascist plot' in
quotes, the paper led with:

``A plot of
Wall Street interests to overthrow
President Roosevelt and establish a
fascist dictatorship backed by a
private army of 500,000 ex-soldiers and
others, was charged by Major General
Smedley D. Butler, retired Marine Corps
officer, who appeared yesterday before
the House Un-American Activities
Committee, which began hearings on the
charges.''

The Times avoided providing on
the front page an account of the
charges as given by the committee
co-chairs and instead, citing ``sources
in Philadelphia,'' the paper claimed
that Butler had named Morgan and Murphy
as being behind a plan under which the
former NRA administrator Hugh Johnson
``was scheduled for the role of
dictator.''

What followed then on the front
page was a string of denials or
ridicule of the charges from those
prominant people named: ``Perfect
moonshine! Too utterly ridiculous to
comment upon,'' said Morgan partner
Thomas Lamont. ``A fantasy! I can't
imagine how anyone could produce it or
any sane person believe it. It is
absolutely false as far as it relates
to me and my firm, and I don't believe
there is a word of truth in it with
regards to Mr. MacGuire,'' said Grayson
Murphy. ``It's a joke! A publicity
stunt! I know nothing about it. The
matter is made up out of whole cloth. I
deny it completely,'' said Gerald
MacGuire. ``He had better be pretty
damn careful. Nobody said a word to me
about anything of this kind and if they
did, I'd throw them out the window. I
know nothing about it,'' said Hugh
Johnson.

Only on the jump, did one find
some details of what Butler charged,
and statements by committee co-chair
Rep. Samuel Dickstein, Democrat
of New York, that Butler
had substantiated much of what had been
attributed to him in previous press
reports. ``From present indications,''
Dickstein is quoted as saying, ``Butler
has the evidence. He's not going to
make these charges unless he has
something to back them up. We'll have
names here with bigger names than
his.'' The congressman said that he
planned to subpoena about 16 people
whom Butler had named and that there
would be a public hearing the following
week.

The article ended with another
denial by Grayson Murphy of any
involvement, terming reports of his
involvement ``an absolute lie.''

Butler was amused by The
Times report, whose mangled
contents were put on the wire services
and then fed out to the rest of the
country. When he arrived back home in
Pennsylvania the next day, he was
besieged by reporters wanting to know
more details. He referred them to the
reports in The Record and
The New York Post by French,
and told them that he was certain that
there would be more revelations as the
committee called the various prominent
people named in his testimony.

The preceding article is a rough version of the article that appeared in
The American Almanac. It is made available here with the permission of The New
Federalist Newspaper. Any use of, or quotations from, this article must attribute them to The
New Federalist, and The American Almanac.